Harley Davidson - 1973 to 1975

I only ever drove the Harley once on a 20 mile outing, and it was frightful. My thighs were almost cooked by the heat from the engine, and the mechanical bits are so wide that you need to be bow-legged to fit on it.

The engine was a 1.2 liter air cooled V2, the silencer was so small it looked like it belonged to a Vespa, and the noise so embarassingly loud, it sounded as if the bike didn't have a silencer at all.

The saddle was nicely sprung and very comfortable, but the sitting position too high to put both feet on the ground at the same time, consequently I was on tip toes on such occasions. Instead of a pole the foot rest was a platform, which was nice, except the vibration was so intense that my feet kept sliding off the platform.

It weighed 750 pounds, and if you had to push it, forget it.

One journey was more than enough.